Interleague Baseball
The Pacific and Central leagues do battle as the season heats up

Hichori Morimoto of the Nippon Ham Fighters

In some ways it’s a shame that 99 percent of all sports
news in this country is devoted to Major League Baseball. Even complete mediocrities get prime-time coverage if they play in the majors. On April 22, soccer star Shunsuke Nakamura won the Player of the Year Award in the Scottish Premier League (he also won Goal of the Season), an astonishing achievement even bearing in mind the generally primitive level of football in Scotland.

But the people behind NHK’s 7:30pm news program on April 23 obviously didn’t think so. They didn’t mention it. Their sports section consisted of coverage of a dreadful performance by Daisuke Matsuzaka in which he gave up six runs but still managed to notch his second win for the Boston Red Sox. When that was finished, they moved on to the excitement generated by the two batters Akinori Otsuka faced in earning his second save of the season for the Texas Rangers. Sports coverage in this country can be painfully one-eyed at times.

The problem is that this can give people the impression Japan’s domestic sports product is inferior or less worthy. But there’s plenty to write home about—or even report on—and baseball proved that in spades last year when Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Trey Hillman and the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters wrote a fairy-tale chapter in the history of Japanese baseball.
Shinjo’s retired, but there’s plenty of baseball left in Japan. Even more so in the following month as interleague play starts up again.

Hillman will be hoping he has more luck against Central League opposition than he’s had against Pacific League teams this year. A month into the season, the Fighters had won only eight games and were propping up the rest of the table. Losing the inspirational Shinjo was tough enough, but the Fighters also lost relief pitcher Hideki Okajima to the Red Sox and, even worse, reigning PL MVP Michihiro Ogasawara (who Hillman has described as the best batter in the world) to the Yomiuri Giants. But it would be dangerous to write off the champs this early in the season, especially with Hillman at the helm. Last year was, as the manager kept reminding us, “unbelievable”; perhaps belief is the one thing they need right now.

Belief is something the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles could be excused for lacking after their debut seasons anchored them at the bottom of the Pacific League, but a clean sweep of the powerful Fukuoka Softbank Hawks in mid-April must have done wonders for their confidence. The Hawks themselves—with Hiroki Kokubo back and in form—responded by trouncing the Fighters at the Tokyo Dome, with team leader Nobuhiko Matsunaka capping the weekend off with a grand slam.

But the team of the year so far in the PL is the resurgent Seibu Lions, who quite clearly don’t need pitchers who give up six runs in a game. Right behind them are Bobby Valentine’s Chiba Lotte Marines, and both teams will cause problems for the CL teams they face in interleague play.
The Lions shouldn’t be too worried in their opening series against the Yokohama BayStars, but the Marines will have more on their plate against Hiromitsu Ochiai’s Chunichi Dragons and master slugger Tyrone Woods.

Hillman will have plenty to worry about when the Fighters open the interleague season against the Yomiuri Giants, who started off in convincing style, but playing at the Sapporo Dome should level the playing field somewhat.

In other opening games for the interleague season, the Hawks face the Hanshin Tigers in Fukuoka, Tuffy Rhodes and the Orix Buffaloes meet Marty Brown’s Hiroshima Carp, while the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles play the Yakult Swallows.

Interleague play begins May 22. See sports listings for details.

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